A LEAGUE OF HER OWN It’s fun-damental

This fall my daughter is playing soccer for our in-town soccer league. I developed the itch to coach and decided to scratch it, registering as an assistant coach.

She’s 5, so the focus is on teaching the fundamentals and of course, having fun.

Heather Harris

This fall my daughter is playing soccer for our in-town soccer league. I developed the itch to coach and decided to scratch it, registering as an assistant coach.

She’s 5, so the focus is on teaching the fundamentals and of course, having fun.

Keeping things light is easy when you are first starting out. But as you progress, how do you keep things fun, not just in sports, but life in general?

The focus becomes more on winning, making more money, earning an athletic scholarship and getting ahead.

How does one go about keeping things fun, especially at the professional level?

During a recent conversation with New England Patriots special teams captain Matthew Slater, I asked him, are sports still fun when it’s your career?

Slater, who has been with the Patriots for six seasons, said he’s had more fun playing football over the last few years than at any other point in his career.

“When you are around a group of guys like this that really love what they do and really work at it and go about it the right way, it makes it enjoyable,” Slater said.

Having the right teammates and work ethic, according to Slater, remain key even at the professional level. That can really be applied to any job.

Slater’s words reminded me of my late uncle Paul. He always advised me to find a job that I was passionate about, and assured everything else would fall into place if I did.

He was right.

I found my passion in writing. There isn’t a day that goes by where I’m not putting the pieces of a puzzle together to create a story. I don’t mind the long, odd hours because I love what I do.

I often compare it to athletics. When I played, I escaped into the “zone.” The same happens when I write.

The rest of the world disappears as I vanish into myself and the words flow from my fingertips.

I’m presented with a new topic to cover, new person to talk to and the challenge of putting a story together for my readers to enjoy.

For Slater, being in the zone means playing football in front of thousands of football fans. He acknowledges that he gets to do what he loves for a living.

“The reality of it is, we’re blessed enough to be grown men playing a child’s sport as a way to provide for ourselves,” he said. “We’re just having a blast, I know I’m having a blast and it’s good to be playing football.”

Whether it’s playing football, jamming on a guitar, adding numbers, engineering a new design for a building, or writing a story — if you are having fun, it makes for a better journey.

And when I’m out there coaching a team full of 5-year-olds this fall and some of them are staring up into the sky, others tackling each other or even eating grass, I’ll ask myself,

“Are we having fun?”

If the answer is yes, then I’ll consider the season a success.

Heather Harris is reporter for the Norton Mirror, Mansfield News and Easton Journal. A three-sport high school athlete and two-sport college athlete, sports have long been a passion of hers. The mother of two can be seen keeping it real in Mansfield, where she resides. Heather Harris can be reached at hharris@wickedlocal.com